


Harbinger

by Raynidreams



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-01
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-23 08:25:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raynidreams/pseuds/Raynidreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set S4.  Leoben decides to do something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They debated, his brothers. They debated with each other and then they took a vote. From there, they took the outcome of this vote and presented it to the Sixes, to the Eights and to Tory. A place where they proceeded to argue again; back and forth, yet after which, the models all voted together. It seemed like an extended process but in the end it didn't take long for them to go from debating and voicing their individual thoughts into making a decision for every cylon. Because in the end there only seemed to be one choice. The smartest and most sensible choice. They were not foolish enough to fail to recognise that this decision would seal the fate of the union, but it was their lives for the lives of the humans and they no longer needed the humans now.

The Six, Caprica Six, was pregnant and by another cylon. By Saul. A true cylon child, and not a genetic anomaly bred between a human and a machine. Through it, Cylon procreation was secured.  So, to separate was the only thing to do.  The human's had chosen their path of war just as they had themselves. But they'd survived their own civil war and they were not about to suffer for the human's doing the same.

The longest time came in reporting the negative outcome to Laura. Some of them were ashamed about the vote. The others merely delaying so as to give themselves more time to come up with a plan of how to escape should the jump go wrong or should  _Galactica_  chase them.

In the meantime, one of the Twos dithered. He wasn't happy about the outcome of the choice of his model and the rest. He was scared of leaving her to her fate and his brother Two to his. So he left the now quiet of the control room, running down the corridors to find his brother. The brother who'd done so much to bring them to this point.

The one he was searching for was not in his room. So, searching further and getting desperate the Two charged on until he thought to search his sight to find his brother. He entered the stream and located him; located him where he should really have expected to find him – in the Hybrid room.

The Leoben there sat on the floor, resting against the wall. He was listening. Listening to the words of the Hybrid as he had to the words of the cylons and Laura Roslin as they'd bickered back and forth between themselves about the fate of two worlds. He'd listened to Roslin's utmost command and had been impressed. He'd routed the sounds from the control room through to here and the cylon and President's voices had all mixed up together in the air with the Hybrid's monologue like a dance of vocal power. Now it was only the Hybrid who spoke to him but Caprica Six's voice still rang in his ears.

"If he hasn't done it already Gaeta will airlock Tigh, Tyrol, Anders… then he'll start with the rest; Kara, Helo, Adama…"

_Kara._

The lights from the datastream panelling reflected red over his features and the hybrid bath shone in his eyes. The illumination showed up the bruising beneath his eyes and shadowed the movement of his lips as they shifted where he muttered to himself, "Harbinger… harbinger of death. She is the… end of line."

It was unclear if he was talking to himself or talking to the Hybrid. If so, their conversation was dreadfully confused.

"Life transcends…' she uttered.

"Kara is the harbinger… I saw her body," he replied.

'…working through the angles… ships collide and fuel… the heat consumes and works like a piston, back and forth… hardness... life… patrol Vipers are circling…'

_Kara._  This in his mind.

'… is working at 50% capacity… working through angels…'

"Yes. I told her that.  It's what I saw she was when we met," he muttered looking upwards.

'… no take-backs on the transmission… the line ends in fire and water.  They run in service channel thirteen… harbinger will lead them… end of line…"

"Death awaits all who follow her. Death is her only friend."

His hands were frenetic and ghostly in the over bright light that shone from off the body floating in the tank.  His fingers were outlined in white and he waived them around flexing his grip and then rubbed them up into his hair

This was how his brother found him moments later; curled up and appearing so desperate and confused. His brother ran up and took Leoben's hands gently to calm him, but surprised, Leoben jerked free then lurched up and seized him instead.  His hand grasped his brother's throat in a punishing grip.

"No… no… I won't be dissuaded. I foresaw this and this is not how it ends. But she must end brother, she must!"

His brother didn't breathe but wasn't afraid. They'd been here before after each time his brother had downloaded on New Caprica. "Brother, it's been decided. She's to be left to her fate."

Leoben let the other Two go, then slumped back down and curled up over on his knees. He apologised for his anger with a pat to the newcomer's shoulder and with pain in his eyes. His brother equally showed there were no hard feelings by tenderly placing his hands to either side to his brother's face.

"This is her fate. I'm sorry. We're jumping away and Kara will die here with the humans."

Hearing it from his brother seemed to shake some sort of sense into the kneeling, irrational Leoben. And as he blinked, the confusion cleared from his blue eyes and he came to properly focus on his brother.

"Do you think this is what I saw all along? That it was her purpose to bring us to here?"

"I don't know brother, but I trust in your vision. I always have."

"Then how can this be? This is not an ending!"

His brother watched him with pity in his face. Worry for him added extra lines to his already older looking features. Unlike the Leoben kneeling on the floor, he'd never had to download during the war. The body he wore, he'd worn since the beginning and it was the last he would ever wear. Like his younger looking brother below him, he too sought to be an individual and to find his own path so he'd stayed with it and his hair now had grey streaks in it and he'd allowed his facial hair to grow long. These things added physical years to his face but the lines on the face between his hands was troubled in much more tortuous ways; in ways the elder looking cylon's limited sight could not even begin to comprehend.

"Let me help? Show me what you see?" he pleaded searching within the younger looking cylon's eyes.

"I see nothing… nothing!"

"Is this because of Kara? If so, you should have spoken for her."

At hearing Kara's name again, Leoben flinched and pulled out of his brother's hold, scrambling on his knees to get away.

"No! Don't you see? It's always been about her!"

The older Leoben moved after him, then used all his strength to forcibly pull his brother's head into his lap, soothing him with gentle strokes to the head.

"You know your voice has sway. We can call for a new vote maybe? Our ways are ending, maybe they'll listen?"

"I can't brother. I can't. She… God… she…" he whispered with tears falling down his face.

"Take a Heavy Raider then brother – go quickly and save her before we jump. Trust in God.  You are always able to find her. Knock her out and take her if you must, just go and save her and save yourself. Bring back our saviour if that is what you believe she is."

"No… no… no brother, that's not the point! Not a saviour! She is the Harbinger of Death! The Hybrid told her, told me… we found her body on Earth. Kara Thrace, she will kill us all. We'll burn like she did. She must end before we all do. Kara Thrace must die!"

 

  


* * *

 

The gun smoke had cleared aboard  _Galactica_  and those responsible had been locked away or shot.  Though it still reeked of the aftermath.  Death surrounded the ship just like it surrounded her, he thought.  Well it was time to stop it; to put an end to her.

He stepped off the Raider and closed his eyes, following the scent of her in his mind like a hunter did its prey. His feet turned corners, breezing past the fans of scarlet still being scoured from off the grey walls, oblivious to both the hatred and, or apathy in the faces of the humans he passed. He only had one direction to go in.  One objective.  To find her, and eventually he did. He found her weaponless and alone in the memorial corridor with her own laughing face pictured above her head from where she was seated on the floor with her back to it.

_Her picture looks like it's of a different woman_.  Then he corrected his own thought -  _the picture was of a different woman_.

He thought this, but did not mess about or greet her.  Simply pulled the weapon up and unlocked the clip with an audible click. Her eyes opened at the sound but she didn't jump. It was like she'd been expecting it. As if she'd been waiting here for him like he'd waited for her in that tent on New Caprica.

"Go on," she whispered after a moment in a rasping voice.

Not blinking, he targeted his aim for the centre of her head. And then he paused. He met her gaze. Took in how filthy she was. How she wasn't dressed for the chill in here and how her body was soot marked and still stained with blood. Two days it had been since the all clear had come from Galactica. Two days in which she'd not showered nor changed from the clothing she'd killed her fellow pilots and humans in. It was as though she wished to halt time - something which he'd been wishing since she'd found Earth.

Stunned, he continued to stare at her, not quite able to pull the trigger.  He dragged it out too long and soon rage boiled up in her dirty face at his dithering.

"Do it! Do it you mother frakker!"

And for the first time in many months, Leoben's sight showed him something of her.  A solid picture of her doubts.  Focusing in on it, he's vision connected with her mind in a way much deeper than she could ever have imagined and her thoughts run through his head:

_Do it Leoben… I'm frakkin' begging you. Do it because who the frak knows what I am? A demon? Something evil? I know one thing for sure is that I deserve it! Because now I don't think that it is you cylons that are the end. She told me – it's me. I am the end of everything!_

He tried to settle the sidearm within his grasp but his hands started to shake. She simply stayed sat with her head compliantly lifted.

Out loud she told him, "I'm a foul thing… all the death I've caused. All the people I've left behind so I can carry on just one more day. Carry on to fight and cause more blood and more death. I'm cursed and I curse those around me." Her voice gradually became as blank as when she'd first spoken.  Then her over bright eyes filled with tears and her cheeks flushed with a fever like redness.  "He's dying I think, Sam.  The back of his head's caved in because some mother frakker got lucky and shot him.  And me?  I was just too Gods' damned slow to stop it.' And seeming to talk to herself, she whispered, 'Maybe I wanted it to happen too. I told him that if I ever found out he was a cylon, I'd put a bullet in his brain. Maybe I was too slow because I wanted him to die.'  She swallowed, zoning back in to him. 'So just do it, because I can't!"

A pause came and then she sobbed.  Wretched broken sobs that came deep from within her. Torturous sounds. A keening that was so raw and imbued with agony that a small part of him thought perhaps it'd be kinder to pull the trigger than let her go on like this. But he couldn't. For he'd heard something and seen something again. He'd seen the flecks shining in the air around her. He'd heard her pain and seen it within her eyes. The blood on her hands. The broken part to her soul.

He dropped the gun. He couldn't hurt her, even if he still wanted to.

She didn't react to the sound of the falling weapon or to the sound of him when he shifted so that he was crouched by her side.

"Kara?" he queried.

"You came here to kill me. So why don't you?"

"You know why."

She mockingly shook her head with her lips set into an ugly line.

"We can't run from this, can we? There's nowhere for us to go… aside from where you lead."

"And a moment ago?"

"A moment ago, I was still standing on Earth. Now I'm sitting here beside you."

Her lip quirked tiredly and she slumped to her knees. "What's the difference?"

He smiled too and just as tiredly.  Leoben then looked away to the opposite wall where he saw the cylon resin was creeping up the cracks in between the photographs.

"I know that this is the precipice, Kara. And I've no idea which way we'll fall."

"Maybe I do. Maybe with me, everything and everyone will die."

"I'm no longer on Earth, Kara…"

"You said that already."

"And there must be some kind of way out of here," he continued ignoring her interruption.

"Great… where's the map?"  He grinned at that but carried on speaking as if she hadn't.

"Earth is dead and we've lived many tomorrows since then. It's strange how I've been so blind. I think I was too caught up before, but I see and understand it now, here by your side. Whichever way this is going, wherever we end up, getting to this point here… you made it happen."

"You know as well as I, that none of use belong here."

"No we don't."

She closed her eyes.  "So shoot me. End it."

"I… can't."

"Why?"

"Because I love you more than I fear you. More than I fear dying."

"And if I kill everyone else?" 

"Then shoot me first," he whispered.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N - This story was originally supposed to be a one-shot, but I wrote this a few months after the initial chapter.

 

The Heavy Raider eased upwards first and then tilted down slightly as it flew along the landing bay until it shot out of Galactica. Free, the narrow screen strip was filled with ships and stars seemingly fixed within the vast void of space.

"Where do you want to go?" he asked, sitting back from the controls, leaving the ship to keep them moving in a single and as of yet unspecified direction. He didn't look at her directly, but his eyes traced her outline in the glass's reflection.

She was looking to her side, lost in thought, with the nail of one hand being shorn at by her teeth.

He breathed out when she didn't reply, and leaned back to close his eyes. It was frakked up how serene he felt in her presence. How insane. Then again, he was crazy; it's not something he questioned any longer. He even acknowledged that perhaps he'd been that way all along, an insane machine made for a world that should make sense but that no longer did to him or anyone. Adeptly, he stopped his mind from running down that spiralling road and let the quiet take him to an almost dreamlike stasis while he waited her out.

She spoke only when it was clear that he had no intention of doing anything until she did. "It's on the log that we're going to the basestar. We're going to see if we can get more answers out of the hybrid," she eventually replied.

He smiled though didn't open his eyes.

"No we arn't. If you'd have wanted to do that, you'd have just taken a Raptor and gone in person. Alone. You wouldn't have put yourself through the issue of requesting to see me. So it's either me you want to talk to, or,' he gave a pregnant pause, 'you want to go further than a Raptor can take you."

In his mind's eye, he saw how her jaw twitched with irritation. Smiling slightly, he waited her out again. He'd learned the hard way on New Caprica to not always push for his own desires. If she wanted something, she would ask. He'd also learned that everything had to be on her terms. That he was powerless for it to be otherwise.

Eventually, the sound of her shifting in her seat reached his ears. He knew that she was examining him now because even through his lowered lids he could feel the directness of her gaze boring into him.

He opened his eyes.

And out of the blue she stated, "You should have killed me when you had the chance."

"No, Kara. I was scared, and acting out of that fear. And I doubted the conviction of my actions even before I raised the weapon to you."

"I'm not talking about the after the mutiny. I'm talking about in the beginning. You should have snapped my neck."

So long ago now. Even so, the day was still as fresh to him as this moment.

He remembered his instant attraction to her. The spark that went beyond all reasoning and programming. He recalled how thoughts of her life played in his mind's eye. How he'd felt the tendrils of love igniting within him from merely the aura of this broken and powerful woman. Then he remembered him tearing his wrists from snapping the cuffs apart. Her eyes widening in shock. The table flying aside like nothing. Shifting upwards, the touch of her warm skin, the strides to take them to the door. The slam of flesh and squeezing… then the moments alone with her and outside reality.

Air rushing in her face.

Her clasping his hand and that of a child.

Them kissing.

To her threat and him revealing that he had a surprise for her. That they were going to find Kobol and that it would lead them to Earth.

Though none of these memories were in his face or his body when he replied simply "No," with a smile.

His minimal reply didn't seem to put her off. She leaned in towards him with an almost morbid excitement lighting up her features. It was the most animated he'd seen her in a long time.

"Just think about it. If you'd have killed me when you had the chance, then maybe your side might have won."

He didn't blink at her point, for it was a thought that he'd had and been called out on many a time in the past. He also didn't interrupt. She spoke so rarely these days that he was reluctant to stop the flow. It brought to mind all those silent afternoons star systems away when, so strung out by the quiet, he'd finally get rewarded for his efforts when she'd rasp monosyllabic replies to his questions. Then her statements had been about nothing important. Here however, it was an active bearing of the inner most fears of her soul.

"If you'd have killed me, who knows what else might have changed? The missions I planned and pulled off. The shoot-outs... gods, who else would've been dumb enough to go back for the arrow? Not Lee. Not any of them. I..."

"Your death would have screwed up the Admiral and Apollo when they needed to be most on their guard. Your death, as a protector of the fleet would have changed so many things," he added on to her argument for her.

Hearing him state it so levelly, she shivered.

Trying to hide her reaction, she replied boldly; "You cylons could've won."

"Perhaps... yes. I think we'd have had a much better chance, anyhow. Strange thing is, I was told by Cavil to kill you, for the stunt you pulled with the Raider. I had orders to do it."

"So why didn't you? Some kind of destiny crap?" she needled, sounding a little more like her old self.

"Frankly yes,' he paused to hold a finger up. 'You always amaze me, Kara, do you know that? Even though you feel it - sorry, have felt it, you still mock... even after all that wonder you experienced as you beheld your shooting star. After the love that you felt for the universe coursing through you."

And her animation dampened. The nail she'd previously been worrying at came back to her lip.

"Love," she repeated bitterly, then snorted in contempt.

"You told me that I didn't know the meaning of the word. The sad truth is, Kara, it's all I know."

Her face opened up in disbelief.

"You've murdered so many people - how can you even dare to say that?"

"I did it for love. For the love and freedom of my brothers and sisters. For the love of God. For the love of humanity and to bring them to Him."

She flared up further. "How frakkin' dare you?"

"Because it's true, no matter how wrong or right, it's true. I did it for love. And don't you think I know how wrong that is sometimes? But I can't help it, Kara. It's how I was made. How I am. I am bound by love. Bound by it most especially to you!" His sentence finishing much sharper than he'd intended. He turned away, not happy that she'd gotten to him.

She clicked the knuckles of one hand as a statement of intent.

"You seriously piss me off, like all the time. Some days all I want to do is…" Her anger lasted for a breath until her look morphed into twisted satisfaction. "Love… and I'll lead you to your end. A great payback there hey, toaster?"

He reached over and grasped her hand tightly.

"Then so be it." At the way he said it, it sounded like an oath.

"How can you be so passive about it?"

"For the same reason that you are. The same reason why no matter how dark and how awful your life, you've never put a bullet in your own brain - hope."

"Yeah,' she replied sarcastically, 'cos I've got that in abundance."

He soothed a thumb along her skin until she pulled her hand away with a brusque tug. He slanted his head down to still hold her gaze.

"Kara, you were born to lie to yourself. To other men… but not to me."

"Frak you. So what if I lie all the time? I do it to everyone… even you,' she came back curtly. Then at something in his face, she stumbled on, 'Some days even the truth tastes like a lie... so much so, I can hardly tell the difference anymore."

He reached out again, but this time to cup her proud chin.

"You have hope. You've always held onto hope or you would've given in the first time your mother put you in hospital. The first time the one who was supposed to protect you above all else was the one who broke you. If you'd have had nothing to cling onto, then you wouldn't be sitting here beside me now."

She wet her lip. "Who says I even am?"

"I do."

"You? You almost made me kill myself once. Remember that?"

He dropped his hand.

"We're talking truths? Well here's one. I thought that if I gave you time away from hardship and responsibility, then you might see clearly. I thought in my care that you might have chance to think and be free from all your doubts. Turns out, I was wrong."

Quietly she commented, "I think that's the first time you've admitted to that particular fact."

He grinned at her reply, not looking sorry at all.

"I was wrong about the outcome, only."

Her tongue smacked in an irritated manner… perversely amused in spite of how awful an admission it was. After a beat she cursed him, "You drive me insane."

His grin only widened.

It went quiet again. Their ship, still on its straight course had headed past the fleet ships so that now only the glittering, rich blackness of space shone before them. Leoben's eyes blurred from the light. From looking into some of the stars so intently that their colours inverted and they looked black on the inside; their power leaving blurry shapes that stayed in his vision even after he shut them.

He couldn't see it physically, but he knew that one of those systems was playing on her mind.

"So... are you going to tell me where we're going Kara?" he asked, not sounding curious in the slightest.

"Like you don't already know," she retorted.

The hollowness of the suns still marking his eyes, he replied, "I'm interested as to why, though?"

She stilled a little.

"Well?"

He made no move to jump the ship.

"Because I think I left in a rush. Because maybe we missed something. And maybe if we go back, I might hear the sound again... maybe feel something again to know where..." her words drifted off.

"Going back there will tell you nothing, Kara. It's a dead world. Whatever lessons it had to teach were not learned long ago. The story of the Earth is done."

"You don't know that... maybe we missed something. You ran... I wasn't thinking... there's too many questions unanswered. For example, how did I end up there? I died in a frakkin' planetary storm light years away... it was impossible for me to…"

"I don't have any answers to those questions, Kara. Only more questions and the phrase that 'all this has happened before'... Perhaps that was another you. Maybe it wasn't. Perhaps we've lived this before and will live this over and over until we get it right; until something changes..."

"I'm not a cylon if that's what you're suggesting."

"You're not listening. It's impossible for me, _US_ to understand everything. We can only try and make sense of some aspects of what and who we are. My beliefs about you and I are fluid. Sometimes I think we've lived these moments before and then other times I know that I stand in one anew. Such is the connection I feel to things. Such is the connection that I felt towards you… that is until I saw your dead body." He went quiet and looked uncomfortable for a moment. Regretful even. "Maybe what we saw there was a shadow. Maybe you are the shadow now. Maybe I am for every time you've killed me and something of what I was, died. Listen to me, Kara,' he started, suddenly sounding less wistful and more focused, 'I honestly don't know what it is that is happening. Not anymore. But that you are at the centre of it is for certain. And us going back to the Earth will not change a single God damn thing about that. All I know is that since the mutiny, since holding that gun up to your head, I feel I am back on my path. My purpose to follow in your footsteps. And as I said before, all I have is love. Take that and use it as a wing to fly with, but not back there." He appeared so impassioned that she couldn't fail to be effected. She sniffed a little, and then rubbed a hand across her eyes.

The lull settled around them again. It was so still out here that the moment they stopped talking, it seemed absolute. He filled it with his compassion. "Kara, I hate to say this to you, but I've come to a conclusion about you... and it's an unpleasant one. I've seen that it's only when threatened with having nothing left, that you really start to fight. That you know what it is that you want to fight for. But I don't want you to have nothing left. So no matter what, you will have this from me always. And I won't falter again."

Kara swallowed the lump in her throat, almost wanting to be cruel and to snap his fragile offer in half. She didn't and instead remained mute.

He gave her a while longer to sort through her emotions, then started at the controls. He was prepared to set it for Earth.

"Leoben, stop. Take us back… back to Galactica," she whispered gruffly.

Nodding, he powered off the FTL prep. If he was pleased, it didn't show in his face. They only thing that did was pity. "You can cry and let the tears go, you know. I won't take them to mean anything," he suggested softly.

The ship turned around and she leaned back just as he had at the start. She didn't sob, but did let them go. They dripped wetly down her cheeks. For he was wrong, his words had meant something. They'd touched her even as though she hated to admit it.


End file.
